final birthday post

had to share this...it was at his "first" birthday celebration w/the lok's. the song was actually for another table, but gabe thoroughly enjoyed it :-) (careful, the song is kind of loud)

back to work!

my first week of work was...great! it's really nice to be at the office surrounded by grown-ups who can verbalize their expectations of me, tell me how much they missed me and are glad to have me back! it's been kind of hectic this week, getting caught up on the past year and trying to refresh my mommy-brain with work procedures.


it's also been nice having my parents looking after gabe while i'm at work. i know he's in a safe environment with ppl who love him to bits, and most importantly, can accommodate his nap schedule, prepare home-cooked meals for him, and are comfortable with cloth diapering and potty-training. and my mom's been really great...she's keeping notes in a journal so i know what they've been up to during the day!

leading up to my return-to-work, i was pretty sad...i didn't want to miss any major milestone's in gabe's life, like taking his first steps or saying his first word. but at the same time, it's good to be away from him and i LOVE the reaction i get when he sees me...a double-take, just making sure i'm really back, and then the slow creeping smile with his arms stretched out for me. ahhhh, just melts my heart :-)

i have to admit, it's been a juggling act this week...after a year of "minimal planning ahead", i have to re-train myself to meal-plan on the weekends so after work, i can re-heat or quickly prepare dinner. with gabe's earlier bedtime, we really need to take advantage of our short time together in the evenings. but at least i have my wednesdays with him! yippee for part-timers!

12 months old!

gabriel's 1st birthday has come and gone. it's really hard to believe that a year's past...somehow time has passed me by and i'm returning to work tomorrow. gabe's a very special boy and had 3 birthday celebrations this weekend, and one more for next weekend!

on friday we celebrated gabe's bday (oct. 4), my sis-in-law's bday (clarisse oct. 3) and my father-in-law's bday (oct. 10). we had a delicious meal, and gabe sure ate a lot! we think he might be hitting a growth spurt because he had 3 servings of fish, a bowl of fried rice, a piece of chicken, mum-mum's and his toddler puffs!

saturday was the big party with gabe's friends. i got frazzled planning his bday party, because we needed to find a location for approx. 12 babies w/parents (my parents' common room). now that most babies are actually toddlers, i needed a baby-friendly meal (annie's mac & cheese for the kids, hotdogs/burgers for the adults) and birthday cake (applesauce spice cake w/vanilla ice cream); and we needed toys for the kids to play with. because i was prepping ahead of time at home, it was a challenge having to transport all the food (and toys) to my parents house and then down to the common room.

it was great to hang out with our friends and see how much all of our kids have grown up. everyone played well together and seemed to have a good time. gabe got overwhelmed a few times and needed mama to comfort him, but he enjoyed having sharon feed him mac & cheese and amy was supplying the goldfish treats! chris and i were absolutely exhausted after 2 bday events and fell asleep at 10:30 :-)

(the full complement of pictures is posted in my picasa album!)

our final bday activity was dinner at the keg with my family to celebrate gabe and my dad's bday (sept. 29). gabe really likes blonde-haired ladies...at music class, he kept gravitating towards 2 blonde moms and reaching out for them; then at dinner, he was holding our server's hand and wouldn't let go, and later on he touched her derriere while she was taking orders. how fresh!

so what's gabe been up to this month?

• he continues to cruise, and he's progressed to using only one hand to hold onto something. he's not quite ready to walk on his own yet, but he is able to push up to standing unassisted! his favourite thing now is to push our kitchen chairs around :P


• he regressed a bit with sleeping - now that it's colder i put him back into a sleepsack (after taking a break over the summer), but he would get frustrated in the middle of the night because he couldn't walk around. after several nights in a row of being woken up, i've now given up on it and he's in a sleeper with the heat cranked up in his room instead.


• he continues to eat everything in sight! gabe's got a healthy appetite for all foods and doesn't discriminate. we try to limit his in-between snacks to fresh fruits, and give him treats (goldfish, mum-mums, etc. etc.) only when we're out and there's no other option.


• he can be very vocal at home or once he's warmed up to his surroundings. i've caught him trying to say mamamamama, but it's still a work in progress. i'm so pleased that sign language has come in very handy. gabe can now sign "please" and he's started to figure out the sign for poop. he also responds to "hungry" and "eat" with a great big smile :-) yup, he's definitely our son!
  

and now it's back to reality and becoming a working mom! i am sad to be leaving gabe and hope that i don't miss out on any major milestone's (i.e., his 1st steps or saying mama!), but at the same time i look forward to the new challenges that lie ahead and can rest assured knowing that gabe's in good hands with my parents :-)

weekend wrap-up

it wasn't a crazy weekend, just a crazy sunday! but first, a first! after much anticipation, we took gabe for his first haircut :-) armed with our digicam, we headed to sparkyz kutz for kidz, and got gabe a new do! i thought sitting in the airplane and having the cartoons on was a good enough distraction, but nope, gabe was miserable. i had to hold his arms down while the hairdresser put him in a headlock...after all, once you start there's no halfway!

skip forward to sunday...after taking the summer off, we resumed our music together classes @ staccato studios. most of our previous classmates have graduated out of music together so we were learning a bunch of new names for our hello song. it's great seeing the progress gabe made from the young age of 3 months when he started. now we can plop him down and he'll crawl to the other kids or just sit and watch what's happening. he loves playing the egg shakers and different percussion instruments, and he actually claps or slaps his legs along with the music now. he's still the youngest one in the class (the other kids are all toddlers who can walk/run), so during the "up" times, one of us still has to carry him. the only difference is that he weighs a ton and i don't have the stamina to hold him long :P

in the afternoon we headed to the PADS 2009 graduation ceremony. because we took a step away from puppyraising, we haven't seen fellow volunteers as much so it was great for them to meet gabriel. and i was especially happy to witness many of "my babies" crossing the stage this year: cary (picture), frankie, silky, fraser, and spirit. sadly, icon was released from the program over the summer and adopted by friends of laser's (icon's brother) raiser.

and to finish off our day, we had an end of summer bbq w/the lok's...on the menu - kobe steaks and lamb chops. now THAT's the way to bbq :-)

let's wean!

i knew my latest mommy challenge (weaning) would be a pain...literally. everyone knows that i've been a milk-producing maniac since gabe's birth. earlier this year i donated 1,000 ounces of milk to the milk bank. shortly after our las vegas trip in the spring, i managed to eliminate the middle-of-the-night pumping. it took a lot of patience...1st night = pump till empty; 2nd night = pump 1/2 ounce less; 3rd night = another 1/2 ounce less, etc. etc. until i managed to not pump at all. i think it took approx. 2 weeks for me to work through this process. note: even though i was sleeping through the night, i would wake up in the a.m. fully engorged and leaking all over the bed. it was not pretty :(


before the alaska trip, gabe was feeding 4x a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime) and during the trip i cut him down to 3x a day (breakfast, mid-afternoon, bedtime). this past week i've eliminated the mid-afternoon feeding and around dinnertime i would pump-to-comfort, which turned out to be 2 ounces, then 1.5, and then 1. yesterday was my first day without pumping, and i was a mess. after a 10 hour stretch my right boob was super-engorged, and i was leaking through the bamboo nursing pads and onto my clothes. (in my earlier months, even the disposable pads couldn't withstand my milk supply!)

i really don't want to pump at work (or have leakage) so i have to muddle through this uncomfortable phase. my goal for the next week is to build to a 12 hour stretch so i can nurse before i go to work, pump (only if i'm bursting) when i get home from work, and nurse again at bedtime. but before i start work, i'm going to start gabe on cows milk...hopefully he'll take to it quickly, so i can do a complete wean in the next month or so.

wish us luck!

this time last year...

...was my due date! i can't believe how fast time has gone by...i've been on leave for over a year now! i've been reminiscing the past few weeks about how anxious i was last september just waiting for labour to start. i've also realized that i never wrote about my birth experience - either on my blog or in my pregnancy calendar. so here we go (don't read if you don't want to know the birth details)!


wednesday, october 1
my recent check-up with the midwives didn't sound promising at all. baby was still really high, and i was nowhere near ready to deliver, so shannon did a 2nd "stretch & sweep" to hopefully get things moving. literally. later that night shannon leaves me a voicemail asking if i want to be induced this week.


thursday, october 2
i call shannon and tell her that YES i want to be induced. after 4+ weeks of "maternity leave", i'm going crazy, not to mention that my sciatica is just killing me :P arrangements are made with burnaby general, and we look good for a friday morning induction. that was a restless night...i tried to go to bed early and get some sleep but nerves were kicking in.


friday, october 3
i'm up at the crack of dawn making french toast for breakfast before we head to the hospital. we leave home with our overnight suitcase and birthing ball (on loan from our doula, roxanne) expecting to have a baby later that day.


by 8 a.m. i'm admitted and getting ready for the cervadil. the only problem is that the baby's asleep (i guess they were having trouble tracking his heartrate to see how we react pre/post-cervadil). so i'm chugging back apple juice in the hopes of waking him up, and then the fetal monitor breaks...some computer glitch with printing the results. so we have to re-start the process. finally, the induction starts!


around 9:30 a.m., we're given the all clear and allowed to go home for 12 hours. at this point some ppl would just chillax and rest up for the pushing later on. but not us...we went to coquitlam centre for lunch and some shopping.



by mid-afternoon we're home again and chris is taking a nap (i guess the induction was hard on him :P). the contractions have been on and off throughout the day but no "holy shit!" or "wtf!" type of pain and they were totally sporadic (anywhere from 2-20 minutes apart). shannon checks in but since there's nothing to report, we agree to meet at the hospital at 9 p.m. roxanne is still on standby, but definitely not needed at this time.


9:30 p.m. and we're back at the hospital for a 2nd dose of cervadil. within 1/2 hour shannon is concerned that the baby's heartrate has risen. meanwhile i'm having a lot of small contractions. the cervadil is removed and i'm on "bedrest". after resting with no improvement, the obgyn is called and i'm put on an iv. for the 2.5 days i had the iv in, i was obssessing over it...i couldn't stand it and i swear to god, i felt pain the entire time.


anyhoo, 1/2way through the iv bag i'm also given extra oxygen. because baby's heartrate is still really high, they try to get a better reading by putting the monitor on his little head. yup, so guess where they had to go to do that? believe me, i don't wish this on anyone! the reason it was so problematic was that gabe had a lot of hair and he was still really high and hadn't dropped (nor was i dilated at all!), therefore they required my cooperation which i wasn't really giving them :P


and somewhere in the middle of all this the lab technician comes to take blood. i swear, no one told me about the daily vials they would be taking during my hospital stay. i have to admit now that was a small reason i demanded an early release...i mean seriously, one day they actually started to prep my arm while i was still sleeping! who does that?!



saturday, october 4
i digress...it's now around midnight and nothing is getting better. in fact, things are getting worse...i'm having contraction on top of contraction with no rest in between. admittedly, most of them aren't too painful, but it's taking a toll on the baby. the obgyn arrives at the hospital (who wears a tan pencil skirt, and long white winter coat to a potential delivery at 1 a.m.?!), and new plans are created. after discussion with the ob and shannon, we decide to break my water. having had fairly mild contractions, i have to say that this was now the worse thing that could ever happen to me. it didn't help that i was extremely anxious and started climbing backwards on the bed. so much for the pain-coping skills we learned in birthing class :P


after everything we went through, nothing worked. baby's heartrate was still really high, he didn't drop at all, and the contractions were still back-to-back. the final decision was to deliver by c-section. obviously this wasn't the outcome we wanted, but baby was telling us a different story. within minutes, the ob was getting scrubbed for surgery, i was getting prepped and wheeled away, and chris was left to figure out how to use our new digicam!


the operating room was cold. and sterile. and full of activity. my biggest fear of labour was having an epidural, but at this point i didn't exactly have any other choice. c-sections are scary...my arms were strapped to the table, one with all the meds i needed, the other with the blood pressure monitor. the sheet was draped over my chest blocking my view of everything that was happening. the anethesiologist was sitting on my left (in case i threw up from the drugs) and when chris eventually arrived (with only minutes to spare!) he sat on my right. there was no commentary during the operation (unless the dr's discussing weekend plans was interesting to anyone), and chris refused to watch for fear he might pass out, so i was left to my own imagination what was happening. all i can say is that you definitely feel the pressure, but it also feels like someone is sitting right on top of you and jumping up and down.

3:04 a.m. and gabriel takashi lok is welcomed into the world. i was sad that i couldn't hold him right away and start our bonding time, but at least we got a "cuddle" in before he went to the maternity ward with chris, shannon and katie (our student midwife) to get all of his stats recorded. i was definitely frustrated to be stuck in recovery for an hour without chris and gabriel; however, having surgery at 3 a.m. does have it's advantages: there's no one to butt in front for the operating room (it also helps that i was considered an "emergency c-section") and i was the only patient in recovery so the nurse was by my side the entire time.

by 4:30 a.m., our little family is reunited and ready to take on the world!

after the birth i started to doubt everything i had done. should i have said no to the induction and let baby decide when to come? should we have waited a few more hours after breaking my water and tried pitocin as well? was my back in any condition to tolerate a potentially drug-free delivery (especially with gabe`s 75th percentile head size)? in a way, i do have answers to some of my questions and concerns...turns out the umbilical cord had wrapped twice around gabriel`s neck, limiting his ability to drop down into the birth canal. so ultimately he arrived the way he was meant to.

and here we are almost a year after his birth, and i obviously haven`t forgotten any of the details (or the pain) of that october weekend (and the following 6 weeks of recovery!). but we are loving our little monkey-man and every day is full of laughter and fun adventures with gabriel.

thanks for taking the time to read about our birth story.

post vacation mayhem

UPDATE! i finally got all my picasa pix sorted out. enjoy :-)

i've never been seasick before, but i do have trouble adjusting to land after travelling. so 5 days after our vacation has ended, i still feel like i'm on the high seas and find myself tipping over for no reason.

gabe has not been sleeping well at all. his naps are all over the place, and he wakes up at 11 p.m. refreshed from a 2 hour sleep thinking it's time to play. ironically chris and i have been tired beyond belief...you'd think we had the most strenuous vacation or something! so for 2 nights we've resorted to baby einstein dvd's for gabe. we'll have to revisit the sleep training techniques again :P

i definitely overindulged on the cruise. even though it was only 7 days, my stomach got used to all the food and especially the evening snacks before bed. i've resolved to start exercising before i go back to work. i'm pretty restricted to what i can do, given that my periformus muscle is still completely messed up, but i can at least take short walks around the 'hood or on a treadmill.

speaking of input, gabe's output has been out of whack. he used to be very regular and i could guess when he had business to do, but this week has been bad. he's pooped four times in his diaper - the first time i actually saw him doing it, but i was busy cooking...he did a little squat, his face zoned out, and then he made 2 little grunting noises, and then he refused to sit down on his bum. after success on the potty this morning, i'm hoping our low-key week will get us back on track.

gabe has been uber-clingy since our return. i've noticed that when i carry him, he'll actually rest his head on my shoulder with his arms wrapped around me and just cling on for dear life. if i put him on the floor and walk away, he rolls around and throws a mini-tantrum! i don't think we spoiled him on the cruise, but he obviously got used to having 4 ppl around him 24/7 and now with just me around, he's "lonely".

on the cruise we noticed he would let go of the furniture and stand for 1-2 seconds without any assistance. since we've been home, he's actually been standing up and bouncing for 3-4 seconds before he falls down. it's really cute because he looks a little stunned when he realizes what he just did :-)

gabe's always liked peekaboo with the blankets, but now he'll actually turn his head away or tilt his body behind an object, and peek back. i know i'm biased, but i think gabe has the best little smile in town and it just makes me smile and i get little tears in my eyes :P

poor chach, he's squintier than usual cuz his eye was still swollen :(

our alaskan adventure!

it was a fantastic vacation, and i'm a little sad to be home. our 7-day alaskan cruise with gabe and my parents was perfect (save for the short bout of seasickness the 3 of us suffered in the open ocean on friday morning). i actually had 3 worries in anticipation of the trip:

#1 was sleeping in the cabin with gabe next to us, but after settling in the first night, gabe figured it out and he was a dream. chris and i even managed to sneak out for the dessert buffet on wednesday night while my parents sat in our dark room :-) we've now been home for 2 nights and gabe's refused to go to bed!

#2 was gabe's napping...i've never had much luck with gabe's naps in his peg stroller (30 minutes max), and now we've switched to a maclaren (with no nap practice pre-trip), so we were venturing into unchartered territory. fortunately we managed to nap him in my parents room a few times and we had success in the stroller as well.

#3 was potty-training...i didn't want him to poop in his diaper for 7 days, but i wasn't sure how he would do on the travel potty. again, turns out i worried for nothing...he did his business faster on the travel potty than at home! i guess he knew there were better things to do like check out the glaciers and eat yummy food :-)

our ship, ms zuiderdam (holland america)
inside stateroom
our inside stateroom on deck 6 was more spacious than i expected, but still only about the size of our condo bedroom/bathroom combined. my parents had a deluxe suite with a verandah, so we hung out in their room a lot, checking out the views and playing with gabe. our cabin stewards, lou & joe, were fantastic. it's sad to hear about their life...lou has a 5 month old son (named gabriel!) who he's never met because he's been working on the ship so he's only seen him via webcam. at least he only has 3 more weeks on the alaska-run and then he's going home for a while.

the food
delicious! we boarded our ship on saturday as early as possible so we could enjoy lunch before we departed. right then i knew it would be a great week for food! one meal down and i had already overeaten :P throughout the week we mostly had sit-down meals in the dining room consisting of 3, 4 or 5 course meals (that would be breakfast, lunch AND dinner). of course no cruise would be complete without a trip or two to the buffet! yup, i gained at least 5 pounds this week.

chris, sandra, mike and i treated ourselves to a baby-free meal in the pinnacle grill for fine dining. i have to say that was the best evening we had: our window seat afforded us a view of our departure from ketchikan (after waiting for a tardy passenger to be let on board), we saw whales (we think they might have been orcas), and we saw our american pilot get picked up from our ship and taken back to shore, and i even got a little drunk from my authentic baked alaska...complete with fire!

the activities

in between all the meals and snacks, we managed to check out some of the onboard activities: the indonesian tea ceremony (basically it was high tea with indonesian tea selections...all the food was pretty standard...finger sandwiches and sweets), the vegetable and fruit art display, behind the scenes kitchen tour, free slot tournaments (chris and i won t-shirts!), evening shows, whale-watching, etc.

tracy arm fjord & juneau
our first icebergs were seen in tracy arm! they weren't quite the titanic-size that i had imagined...more like small to medium-sized boulders (of course, only 10% of the iceberg is actually visible). since chris, sandra and i booked an excursion we didn't actually get to visit juneau at all. instead we took a helicopter ride (a first for the 3 of us) to mendenhall glacier. i was really nervous about being in a 6-passenger helicopter but it was actually quite fun...i just wish the ride was a bit longer! the glacier was gorgeous and we got to drink water straight from the source. refreshing!

skagway
this time we actually got to do some sightseeing and shopping in town. our shore excursion (for the entire family) in skagway was a train ride on the White Pass & Yukon Route (the Klondike Gold Rush).

glacier bay
this was where we saw all the glaciers: margerie, grand pacific, johns hopkins, and lamplugh. the best part of all the glaciers was seeing the calving (when the ice falls from the glacier into the ocean, creating icebergs). the sound as the glacier is cracking is unbelievable...dead silence in the inlet then a loud thunder-like roar before chunks of ice break off crashing down. it felt a bit like watching paint dry...standing around waiting for something exciting to happen, but when it does...WOW! at least we had seals nearby to occupy our attention :-)

ketchikan

more shopping! actually, i didn't spend a single dime on anything. it was great travelling w/my parents cuz for once i didn't have to buy souvenirs :-) i can't explain it, but chris and i were so tired that we didn't venture out very long...instead we opted to nap with gabe for 2 hours. in hindsight it was a waste, since we missed out on half of the town.

all about gabe!

gabe was definitely a star attraction on the cruise! he won everyone over with his infectious smiles and 2-handed waves. it's funny, all the staff and crew onboard are very pleasant and friendly, but as soon as they saw gabe, it's like a light switched and they became all mushy and uber-friendly. just like lou, they all miss their families back home and they probably don't get young babies on board very often. and really, who doesn't love a baby when they smile and clap at anything?!

overall, it was a great vacation! we spent time together as a family yet chris and i were able to get away for a few hours here-and-there. it does benefit everyone when you travel with the grandparents :-)

11 months old!

ok, this past month just flew right by, and i only have 4 more weeks of 24/7 fun with my little buddy :( it's been a very exciting month and gabe's kept me laughing throughout!



we're cruising! in more ways than one :-) we took our alaskan cruise (i'll post about it later) and gabe was definitely cruising his way around the cabin! since everything in a stateroom is more cozy, the furniture was close enough that he could maneuver his way around the bed, couch and coffee-table. unfortunately during one cruising stint, he had a tumble and got his first black eye. his walking days aren't too far off...gabe's gotten really brave and has been seen standing without any assistance.

pre- and post-bruise

we're talking! gabe's favourite word to say is dada, but it's still not 100% directed at chris. when asked where's mama or where's dada, he does associate us with the words, but no solid attempts at saying mama yet. in the past few days he's started 2 new things: teeth-grinding (ugh!) and lip-smacking. i love the lip-smacking...it's noisy and hilarious to watch.

we're waving and signing! gabe's word/sign association is growing stronger. when he's finished on the potty, he'll sign "all done". and last night at dinner, when i asked if he was "all done" or wanted "more", he signed "more!" and with all great successes, gabe loves to give a round of applause. at the chef's master dinner on the cruise, after the "performances" gabe was clapping for all the servers and entertainers. he's given a "thumbs up" once but we haven't had a repeat performance yet. we've noticed that gabe usually won't wave at strangers until he's warmed up to them, but once he does it's a never ending waving game :-)

we're eating and drinking! gabe has FINALLY started drinking water! he really enjoys holding onto his sippy cup but he's still having trouble tipping it so he can drink the water. instead he prefers to bang his cup on the table until water sprays everywhere :P gabe was a superstar on the cruise and ate everything that was offered to him. we would usually order from the kids menu for him (chicken nuggets & fries, fish & chips, mac & cheese), but because we were eating 3 or 4 course meals, his food didn't come soon enough so he ended up eating whatever we were eating.




gabe's 11 month birthday was celebrated on the cruise, and the staff were just loving him. he was "kidnapped" on more than one occaision by the dining steward and the dining manager. in honour of his birthday they surprised us all with a special birthday cake and indonesian celebration song for gabe.

alaska, here we come!

it's been a busy week-and-a-half! g&s were in town so we had lots of playtime for trevor and gabe...good times; maddie's 1st birthday; playdate @ jonah's house; playdates with charlotte, luke and grace; the list goes on! so much activity and i captured it all on camera...visit my picasa link for all the fun times :-)

and now i'm taking advantage of gabe's morning nap to do some last minute packing for our trip. see ya'll in a week :-)